Ed and the Sprat
by z'yiandria
Summary: He knew her four days and died for her. Ed's views on Nita and the Song of the Twelve through Deep Wizardry.
1. Meeting the Sprat

Greetings, readers. To those of you who have encountered my work before, yes, I am branching out of the Harry Potter fandom (not that I won't continue there, of course). I didn't expect the first branch-out to be a Young Wizards fic, but I was reading Deep Wizardry and this idea just wouldn't leave me alone. This fic will be quite short by my normal standards--I still can't quite get the hang of oneshots, but this'll be three chapters, four at most. And as a general note, yes, I will be using quite a bit of Diane Duane's original dialogue in this fic. Let me know if it bothers you, and maybe I'll try to work something out.

Disclaimer: what you recognize is not mine.

Please review. ;D

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His first impression of her was wrong. That in itself was strange; his first impressions were usually dead on. And sometimes there was a very literal emphasis on the dead part.

He'd been feeding on a very nice school of smallfin tuna when he saw one whale he'd been expecting, two he had not. He kept silent for a moment after S'reee greeted him, circling the small group and studying the two unfamiliar ones. They were afraid, and that made them interesting. One of them—the sperm whale—shuddered, and there was something so un-_whale_-like in that shudder that he had to take a closer look. No, it wasn't a whale at all, but a human in a whalesark. And the other, the humpback holding so still—she was human, too, clearly effecting a shapechange.

Finally, after his third circle around them, he answered S'reee's salutation. "Young wizard, well met." He questioned her about the business his people had had with her two nights ago, when her blood had been in the water. The wizard imitating a sperm whale seemed indignant about the affair, but the other kept still and silent. Terrified, he thought with disdain, terrified and ignorant.

Then S'reee turned to the business at hand. "Since you heard the Calling, you know why I'm here."

"To ask me to sing the Twelfth in the Song," he answered with some boredom. Oh, the Songs were interesting enough, and there was always good feeding, but sometimes he balked at the thought that sooner or later, he'd have to go through it all again. And again, and again . . . "When have I not?" he asked, even though he knew the dry humor was lost on S'reee. The ignorant young humpback didn't know how old he _really _was. "You may administer the Oath to me at your leisure. But first you must tell me who the Silent One is." He liked knowing what he ate before it came to that, and the Silent One was sure to avoid him as much as possible until the actual Song. It was always the same.

"She swims with us." S'reee motioned toward the second, yet silent humpback.

"Sir. I'm Nita." It surprised him—just a little, of course, for not much could surprise him anymore—that she met his gaze. Her eyes were what had led him to the knowledge that she was a human. Whales, as warm-bloods, were expressive enough, but as creatures who depended on sound more than sight, their emotive eyes were no match for a human's. There was an honesty in those eyes that couldn't hide anything.

"My lady wizard, you're also terrified out of your wits." How would she react to _that_? Let her be honest about _that_, if she dared.

She hesitated. "Master-Shark, if I were, saying so would be stupid; I'd be inviting you to eat me. And saying I wasn't afraid would be stupid too—and a lie."

He laughed. He couldn't help it. This Silent Lord was quick on her fins. He allowed himself a grudging respect for her, as he had not felt for any whale playing the Silent One in a very long time. He exchanged a few words with the other human, Kit, and took note in his bravado, the kind that masks a deeper fear than that of the honest ones. This one felt he had to protect Nita. How amusing.

"She is not as frightened as she looks, Kit," he said, imparting the secret to Nita's friend. "And at any rate, I suspect you're more so." He took great pleasure in watching Kit's reaction to his subsequent and rather matter-of-fact warning, describing the exact procedure of dining on sperm whale. And he was amazed at the human's stupidity as to suggest he caused fear.

"I frighten no one," he corrected the irrational warm-blood. "No one who fears gets it from anywhere but himself. Or herself," he amended, glancing at Nita. She didn't notice. "Cast the fear out—and then I am nothing to fear . . . " It really was amazing the misconceptions warm-bloods had about fear, he thought idly. "No matter, though; you're working at it. Kit, Nita, my name is ed'Rashtekaresket."

"It has 'teeth' in it."

He regarded the young human in mild surprise again. "You hear well. And you're the Silent One? Not the Listener?" He meant it as a joke, but S'reee, as per usual, took him literally.

"The Listener's part is spoken for, Pale One. And the Silent One's part needs a wizard more experienced than any we have—one already tested against the Lone Power, yet young enough to fulfill the other criteria. HNii't is the one."

_Already tested?_ he thought as he noted S'reee's accented use of Nita's name with slight scorn. He regarded Nita again. Really, it was getting a little ridiculous, the amount of double-takes this young wizard was beginning to require. Already tested against the Lone Power indeed—then what right did she have to be afraid of _him_, a mere shark, albeit the Master-Shark? "Then these are the two who went up against the Lone One in Manhattan," he said slowly. He spent a few moments of annoyance that Kit might think he didn't know the human name for Manhattan when he'd eaten so many humans, then at Nita's shock for his admitting to the last. Even so, they were interesting, these human wizards.

"I'm glad you brought them, S'reee," he admitted. "If this 'Heart of the Sea' the wizards always speak of actually exists, then these two should be able to get its attention. And its attention is needed."

S'reee looked and sounded irritated. "It exists, Pale One. How many songs have you played Twelfth in, and you still don't admit that—"

"More Songs than you have, young one," he reminded her. She might not know his exact age, but she knew he was old. The memories weighed heavily on him for a moment, then he pushed them away, cast them out. "And it would take more still to convince me of what can't be seen by anyone not a wizard. _Show _me the Sea's Heart, this Timeheart you speak of, and I'll admit it exists."

"Are you denying that wizardry comes from there?"

"Possibly, if it does not. Don't be angry without reason, S'reee. You warm-bloods are all such great believers."

He changed the subject, seeing he would not be able to make S'reee see his point of view. It was tiresome to try to convince someone to look at things from a different angle when they were locked into their own. The four spent a few minutes talking about the upheavals of the deep—he was surprised to hear Kit knew about the krakens—and the recent deaths of so many Senior and Advisory wizards. He told them he was reminded of Afállonë, or Atlantis, as the humans called it; but he didn't expect anyone to catch his hint that he'd actually been there. They probably thought he'd only heard of the event, just like anyone else. By the sea, he felt old.

"Uh, Ed—ed'Rak—Look, can I call you Ed?"

He regarded this surprising young wizard once more. She couldn't know of the history behind his name. She couldn't know that only one other had ever dared call him by such a name as Ed, that he'd been as close to being friends with that one as he ever got with _anyone_—and that he'd eaten her as the sacrifice in the very first Song. Oh, he'd had other nicknames. There had been the odd Killer or two—supposed patrons of laughter—who had been daring enough to call him Karesk or Resket. But those names still had the 'teeth' in them.

"At least I can say it," Nita continued in hurried explanation, "And if I'm going to be singing with you, it can't be titles all the time."

_Can't it?_ he thought dryly. The other Silent Ones rarely had a problem with it.

"We must know each other, you say," Nita finished, looking at him a little anxiously.

Ed. Would it be so bad to be called that again? "A sprat's name," he said as he cast the memories out again. "A fry name—for me, the Master." Ah, the irony. H'roonhiit had always said his name gave him far too much dignity. He paused. He was slipping in his ability to cast out the memories. But the audacity of that young wizard to suggest H'roonhiit's name for him . . . He laughed. "Well enough. You are the Sprat, and I'm Ed."

She looked unnerved, but her voice didn't show it. "Great. So, Ed, what happened? In that Song, when it went wrong. Was anyone hurt?"

Oh, the naiveté. He described the fall of Atlantis as he remembered it happening. Then S'reee dived in with her own explanation, and he let his mind wander. He studied Nita and Kit as they swam, determined not to underestimate them again. But then, he supposed he shouldn't like to overestimate them, either . . . They were still young, after all. And the young were stupid.

"So we tend to be very careful about the Song. 'Lest the Sea become eh Land, and the Land become the Sea—'" S'reee was saying as they swam.

"And the krakens are breeding," he finished, bored with the conversation and ready for it to be finished. "Well. I'm for the Northern Rips tonight; there's trouble in the water there."

The look in Nita's widening eyes was one of horrified awe, and her movements were suddenly filled with that first terror that had almost disappeared in their conversation. Her thoughts practically screamed distress, and he gave a reflexive turn towards her before schooling himself. Trouble in the deeps, he reminded himself. It was important he didn't eat her just yet.

"Beware, Nita. Only a dead shark could have avoided hearing _that_ thought. If we're to know each other well, as you say you desire, best mind how you show me your feelings. Else I shall at last know you most intimately, sooner than you are planning—and the relationship will be rather one-sided." He looked at her steadily, making sure she got the message, then turned back to other matters. "I was going to say: matters swimming as they do, I will see you three home. It's getting dark, and—"

"Dark!" Nita practically wailed in shock, interrupting him. She looked at Kit, who returned the distress.

"The Sun's going down. We're really in for it now."

He watched as Nita reined in her panic before addressing him. She was getting better at hiding her feelings. "Master-Shark, we have to get back to, uh, our feeding grounds. And in a hurry. Our parents are waiting for us, and we had orders to be back before it got dark."

He wanted to laugh again. Feeding grounds indeed. Hadn't he shown them he knew the human names for everything? But no matter. "As you say," he replied calmly. "But we will not be at Bluehaven before many stars are out and the moon is about to set."

He allowed Nita a few moments of pretended calm and inward panic as they tried to decide what to do. But really, panicked about getting home a little late? He found the concept strange indeed. S'reee wouldn't be expected to return to her own feeding grounds at all these next few days.

"Sprat," he said finally, addressing Nita, "this is an odd thing, that your sire and dam impose restrictions on you when you're doing a wizardry of such weight."

It was Kit that answered, and the words made the panic suddenly understandable. "They don't know we're wizards."

He watched calmly as S'reee reacted in shock, letting the surprise wash over him and then dissipate long before S'reee was finished babbling and Kit explained the differences of views of wizardry on land.

"I'm no wizard," he commented, "but only a fool would try to deny a wizard's usefulness. It must be a crippled life youe people live up there without magic, without what can't be understood, only accepted—" _He_ didn't understand wizardry, that was certain. It hadn't mattered how many times H'roonhiit had tried to explain it to him. But in the end, he had accepted it like anything else because he really couldn't deny it.

"This from someone who won't admit Timeheart exists unless he sees it for himself?"

He was surprised at the wry humor in Nita's voice. She was someone he could get used to talking to, no matter his custom of swimming alone. She was someone who might—just possibly—be able to see wizardry from the outside angle. So he actually bothered trying to explain to her: "Sprat, if it does in fact exist, can y not believing in it make the slightest difference? And as for understanding—I'm not interested in understanding Timeheart." He hid the bitterness, cast out the reappearing memory of H'roonhiit telling him that only wizards could exist in Timeheart . . . Worrying about it was a waste of time. He had discovered that long ago. "What use is spending time figuring out, say, why water is wet? Will it make breathing any—'Ware, all!"

The krakens were attacking. Finally, he could react to the fear around him. His teeth sank deliciously into the point where tentacles joined torpedo-shaped body, right where the eye was . . . Oh, the delectable feeling of the end of pain, the taste of blood in the water, and the stillness afterward. He didn't like the taste of ink so well, but it was hardly something to complain about. As he sailed free of his first victim, he spied Nita holding very still again, keeping silent. Wise move, young wizard, he thought, if completely pointless. He was hardly going to lose sight of her if she didn't move.

He reduced another kraken to bloody tatters, then went after and killed the last before it could escape. He returned to the group of whales, now near the surface, and explained. "That last one was in pain at the thought of returning to the depths without its purpose fulfilled. So I ended that pain."

"Purpose?" the imitation sperm whale asked stupidly.

"Surely you don't take that attack for an accident, young one. Any more than the shaking of the sea bottom these days or the ill chances that have been befalling S'reee's people have been accidents."

Nita took the comment the wrong way, thinking of his people rather than the whaling ship. "You mean that what happened to S'reee—I thought you were on our side!"

"Peace, spratling. I pay no allegiance to anyone in the Sea or above it; you know that. Or you should. I am the Unmastered. I alone. The encounter S'reee and Ae'mhnuu had with the ship-that-eats-whales was doubtless the Lone One's doing. It has many ways to subtly influence those who live. As for the sharks—They did according to their nature, just as you do. Do not presume to blame them. On the other flank, however, _my_ people have only one Master. If the Lone One has been tampering with species under my Mastery, then It will have to deal with _me_."

"I'm sorry. I thought you meant you told the sharks to just go ahead and attack a hurt whale." She rolled over, as S'reee had done when greeting him, and exposed her stomach and flanks to him.

A gesture of trust and self-confidence—she was learning. He brushed past her and nudged her lightly in the ribs. But this business of her being shocked and angry that he might tell his people to follow their nature had to end. "In another time, in another place, I might have told them to. In another time, I may yet tell them to. And what will you think of me then, Sprat?"

"I don't know."

He almost smiled. "That was well said too. So let us be on our way; we're close to tiana Beach. S'reee, you and I have buusiness remaining that must be done before witnesses."

They went through the oath, she carefully and he impatiently.

"So up, now, the three of you. We are where you need to be."

Kit was surprised. "How can you tell? There's a lot of Tiana Beach, and you're never seen our house—"

Such ignorance. He knew for a fact there were human studies on how well sharks could smell. And he would have to be deaf not to hear the shouts. "I can smell your human bdies in the water from this morning. And besides, I hear distress."

"Uh-oh . . . "

"S'reee, when will you need us next?"

"Next dawn. I'm sorry we can't have a day's rest or so, but there's no time anymore."

"Do we have to be there?" Kit asked.

"The Silent Lord does. In fact, normally it's the Silent Lord who administers the Oath, since her stake in the Song is greatest."

He waited as the three whales panicked a bit more, then surfaced above Kit and Nita, providing adequate distraction for them to change back into their natural forms and get back on the beach. When they took a long time, he even went so far as to jump completely out of the water and dolphin-dive back in. In the brief second he hung suspended in the warm air, he spotted Kit and Nita in their pinkish, two-legged forms. "Until later, my wizards!"

Then he fell back into the water to meet S'reee again. They swam for a long way before S'reee finally spoke, right to the point where they were about to go their separate ways.

"You approve of the chosen Silent Lord, Master-Shark?" she said, a little timidly.

He glanced at her calmly. "It does not matter if I approve of the Silent One or not. What matters is if she is a powerful wizard and is willing to make the sacrifice. I will see you tomorrow."

"Really?" S'reee asked in a surprised whistle. She looked as though she were about to say something else, but he turned his back and swam away before she could, following the scent and sounds of distress in the Northern Rips. He had pain to end.


	2. Acquaintance and Respect

Sorry for the delay--one this long probably won't happen again. Many thanks to those who reviewed. Regarding gopher's unsigned review, this story is not based on any story or movie other than Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane. And speaking of which:

What you recognize is not mine.

I hope you enjoy the chapter. Please review.

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He met S'reee and Hotshot in the water off Tiana Beach, but kept silent after their cursory greeting until Kit and Nita joined them. The dolphin and three whales greeted each other warmly—as warm-bloods did—and talked of the plans for the day before setting out. He was a little disappointed that Nita did not greet him as well. He could care less about Kit, but he'd been expecting at least casual words from someone who had surprised him so much the previous day. Perhaps he had misjudged her?

"You are silent today, and you did not greet me," he observed to her as they swam. "Is this courtesy to another celebrant?"

She glanced at him edgily. "Good morning, Ed."

"Oh, indeed. You're bold, Sprat," he laughed, but then made a more sober realization. "And the boldness comes of distress. Beware lest I be forced to hurry matters, so that we should have even less time to get acquainted than you seem to desire." And really, what was it with this desire? For a human, it seemed rather morbid to want to get to know your executioner.

"That was something I was meaning to ask you about. This 'distress business—'"

"Ask, Sprat." It had been at least ten Songs since he'd entertained questions.

"You said before that it was your 'job' to end distress where you found it . . . "

Was there a reason for the pause? Ah, yes—"You are wondering who gave me the job. Perhaps it was the Sea itself, which you wizards hear speaking to you all the time." She looked doubtful. Like many warm-bloods, she seemed to think 'good' was equated with 'painless.' He decided to correct the notion, urging her to look more closely at the world she was trying so desperately to save.

"Those are just dumb creatures, though. They don't think. You do—and you _enjoy_ what you do." It was almost an accusation.

"So? How should I not?" he said bluntly. "Like all my people I'm built to survive in a certain fashion . . . and it's only wise to cause what you build to feel good when it does what it must to survive." He expounded on what the humans called Darwinism, justifying his own methods of serving life. "Is that so bad?"

She looked thoughtful at this. "Well, that way . . . no. But I bet you wouldn't be so calm about it if it was _you_ dying."

"Me? Die?" No one ever suggested he would die. They all knew he was old, even if they didn't know his age, and it would have been utterly impertinent and foolish to ask the Master-Shark such a question. Yet here came this human, swimming into the Sea . . . He laughed. Why not give her an explanation to such a question? Why not expound on his own thoughts of death, unheard by other ears as they were? If she was wise or brave or stupid enough to ask . . .

"The Master-Shark eats the Silent Lord's 'Gift,' you know, along with the Silent One," he said slowly, calculatingly. "There's immortality in all the sharks, in various degrees. But what good is immortality if you haven't died first? And nothing in the Sea is deadly enough to kill me against my will."

"What about with it?"

He snorted to himself. As if anyone could ever actually have the will to die. To spread death to others, yes, but to die oneself? "Ah, but will must spread to the body from the mind. And after all the years I've lived in it, my body is too strong. All it wants is to eat, and live. And so it does; and I swim on. Immortality is of terrible power. It would take something more powerful yet to override it . . . " He thought about that for a moment. Something more powerful than the will to live? He didn't think he personally had it, but he had, of course, witnessed those few who had. Mothers (mostly warm-bloods) protecting their young, friends sacrificing themselves for each other, the almost annoyingly noble Silent Lords . . . And of course, H'roonhiit. But he still did not like to think about her death—

"But all that being so," he went on to Nita, "for good or ill, I am the Destroyer. Being that, I might as well enjoy my work, might I not? And so I do. Would it help if I decided to be miserable?" Oh, he had decided that once, so long ago. And the others had nearly killed him to end his own distress, Master-Shark or no. It was so much better to just cast it out. Cast away fear, despair, misery, and only life was left. And to most people, be they human, shark, fish, or whale, life was precious enough.

"No, I suppose not," Nita said, clearly subdued.

"So I go about my work with a merry heart"—if it could be called merry, he thought wryly. He doubted any warm-bloods would think it so—"and do it well as a result. That should please you, I think—"

"I'm delighted," she sang sarcastically.

He didn't miss her comment, but kept going as if he hadn't heard. "—for spells work best, you wizards tell me, when all the participants are of light heart and enjoying themselves." Like the last Silent Lord, who had been laughing at a joke of the Killer's when she died. That one had been annoying, even if she tasted good. But what was he thinking? They all tasted well enough, and Nita would, too. "I shall certainly enjoy eating _you_ when the time comes 'round."

For some reason, that made the Sprat upset. "Ed, that's not funny."

"It isn't?"

She stopped swimming and stared at him. "Ed, what was that crack supposed to mean?"

That _crack_? Gallows humor if ever he knew it, even if it was the executioner making the cracking. But she knew that . . . "The Silent Lord is pleased to jest with me," he said finally, regressing to the slang of an earlier time in his slight confusion.

"Ed!"

His blood rose within him. "Distress, distress, Sprat. Have a care." He swam toward her.

Her voice was back to that conscientious calm. "Ed, are you trying to say that you're actually planning to _eat_ me sometime soon?"

Well how else did she think the Silent Lord met her end? Did she think he was in the Song to recite lines? "The day after tomorrow, if we keep to schedule."

He could smell the distress emanating from her, and his teeth started to itch. What in the Sea was wrong with her? She'd signed up for this part, hadn't she?

She gulped. "Ed, . . . the Song, the whole thing . . . I thought it was just sort of, sort of a play . . ."

A _play_? As in one of those ridiculous human exercises in pretend? Then she hadn't been expecting him to eat her. Well, that was going to cause her no small amount of distress. And he had to be the one telling her. His stomach rumbled. "Indeed not. There's always blood in the water at the end of the Song. I am no wizard, but even I know that nothing else will keep the Lone Power bound. Nothing but the willing sacrifice, newly made by the Celebrant representing the Silent One—by a wizard who knows the price he is paying and what it will buy. The spells worked during the Song would be powerless otherwise, and the Lone Power would rise again and finish what It once began." That much he knew from another Silent Lord who had been an almost-friend—one called Maenhyemuu, who had sacrificed himself two Songs before Atlantis' fall.

"But—" There was a long pause while he waited for her to say something. Then she was swimming away. Slowly and without direction at first, then faster, faster . . . A wise move, perhaps, considering how much distress she was feeling.

Her partner called after her, then S'reee too.

She turned back at S'reee's voice. "Why didn't you tell me!"

S'reee looked nervously to where he was swimming—still some distance away, but being drawn closer. "Oh, hNii't, the Master-Shark is about—for Sea's sake, control yourself!"

He snorted again. As if S'reee could rein in her perpetual anxiety with a fraction of the control the Sprat had just showed. He swam closer, restraining his speed, but advancing nonetheless.

"Never mind him!"—he laughed quietly at this remark, pain-induced or no—"_Why didn't you tell me!_"

"About what the Silent One does? But you said you knew!"

He was getting too close. He forced himself to circle away, going against the scream in his blood. The urge was so hard to resist that he actually missed hearing part of the conversation as he tried to battle it. A swarm of fish passed just then—he was too distracted to notice just what kind—and sensing their own little fears, he turned on them. The screaming abated as he ended the lesser distresses of several of the small 'dumb creatures' as Nita had called them.

Hotshot was bounding through the water near him, black eyes glittering in ignorance of the distress a short way off. "Hungry, then?"

He ignored the dolphin and turned back toward the conversation.

"—The minute the first Celebrant takes the Oath, the Song's begun," Nita was bleakly informing her partner, "and everything that happens to every Celebrant after that is a part of it."

The fear in the water around her had dimmed somewhat. Insulated by shock, perhaps.

"HNii't, what will you do?" S'reee asked in a soft, anxious voice.

He let his shadow fall over Nita. Surely her fear had dulled enough that she'd be able to control it the rest of the way now? "I thought I sensed some little troubling over here," he said. She remembered what he'd said about lying to a shark, didn't she?

"Yes," the Sprat answered.

"Is the pain done?" he asked dutifully.

"For the moment. Let's go. The Gray is waiting, isn't she?"

He came at the last of the group as they entered the chill and gloomy Old Man Shoals, and he watched the Sprat closely. Not so much a Sprat, he reflected meditatively. Not that he intended to stop calling her one.

Yes, she had to be in shock, he decided. She swam calmly and gracefully—if silently and not as cheerfully as when he'd first met her.

S'reee was clearly miserable at the thought of what had happened, though trying her best not to show it. Hotshot darted through the water as recklessly as always, perhaps a little confused at the happenings he'd missed, but wise enough not to ask. Kit, the sperm whale imitation, was perhaps most curious of all to watch. He was still swimming with that bravado that served as a replacement for his cast-out fear, but he was angry. Not at anyone in particular, but at the Sea and the situation he and his partner had suddenly found themselves in. So protective of Nita—

The distress was making him itch.

He was almost glad to see Areinnye's anger as she greeted the others, and Nita first. He didn't hear all of the argument between sperm whale and human, but he did see Areinnye's wizardry that sent Nita sprawling backwards. He'd never gotten on well with Areinnye. And, he thought suddenly, they really didn't need her for the song since Kit was there . . . Interested at the intensity of her anger, he swam closer.

He did not reach the small gathering before Nita unleashed her own wizardry.

"So the Sprat has teeth after all. I am impressed," he admitted as he finally reached her.

"Thanks," she said. But she didn't go on, and they proceeded to where S'reee—who finally seemed to be coming into her own—was chastising Areinnye.

He circled the group as anger bubbled and accusations were made. Then came introductions, and Areinnye learned of Nita's part in the Song.

Scorn was apparently Areinnye's only offer of respect. She continued to criticize the humans and asked whether Nita had to be tricked into accepting.

A little too close to the truth, there . . .

"Unwise. Most unwise, wizard, to scorn a fellow wizard so—whatever species she may belong to." After all, even he had respect for wizards, and he'd eaten nearly every species swimming in the sea. "And will you hold Nita responsible for all her species' wrongdoing, then? If you do that, Areinnye, I would feel no qualms about holding you esponsible for various hurts done my people by yours over the years. Nor would I feel any guilt over taking payment for those hurts out of your hide, now." He purposely flashed his teeth at her, working his mouth perhaps a little wider through the water than he normally did.

She backed off with a feeble attempt at a comeback. "You take strange sides, Slayer. The humans hunt those of your Mastery as relentlessly as they hunt us."

He didn't show his surprise at her words. "I take no sides, Areinnye," he said coldly. "Not with whales, or fish, or humans, or any other Power in the Sea or above it. Wizard that you are, you should know that. And if I sing this Song, it is for the same reason that I have sung a hundred others: for the sake of my Mastery—and because I am pleased to sing. You had best put your distress aside and deal with the business we have come to discuss, lest something worse befall you."

He let S'reee take over then. Soon enough, the Oath was administered and they were swimming away. He cast Areinnye one last look, then followed the others.

"Boy, _that_ was a close one," Kit said as they left. "If those two got started fighting . . . "

Hadn't anyone ever warned that boy it wasn't smart to talk about sharks as if they weren't there? "It would not have been anything like 'close,'" he informed them.

"Okay, great, she couldn't kill you. But isn't it just possible she might hurt you a little?"

He smiled. "She would regret it if she did. Blood in the water will call in some sharks, true. But their _Master's_ blood in the water will call them all in, whether they smell it or not . . . every shark for thusands of lengths around. That is _my_ magic, you see. And whatevr the Master-Shark might be fighting when his people arrived would shortly not be there at all, except as rags and scraps for fingerlings to eat." He wasn't boasting, just stating a fact. His sharks had destroyed that one sperm whale several thousand moons back, and all he had to show for it was a long scar near his tail.

They changed the subject to Areinnye and her oh-so-cheery disposition. Discussion of her power and of the others the summoning spell would be bringing in lasted until they were back at Tiana Beach. The moon had risen, and Kit and Nita's distress levels rose as they left the water and walked back onto the beach. Just as well he couldn't reach them.

S'reee and Hotshot bade him goodbye, and he set off for familiar hunting grounds.

As he went about his business, ending distress and eating well, he couldn't help but think of what Areinnye had said. _You take strange sides, Slayer._

He _had_ taken Nita's side, and he knew it. Oh, what he'd said to Areinnye had been true enough in principle—and if you knew how to twist the truth and believe it, you rarely had to lie. But in that one moment, if it had come to attacking one of the two distressed whales before either had put blood in the water, he would have sunk his teeth into Areinnye.

For the sake of the Song, he told himself. After all, Areinnye could be replaced; Nita couldn't.

And he'd never liked Areinnye, anyway. Far too full of herself. Ae'mhnuu had been quite right not to train her, even if the alternate was S'reee.

But he couldn't ignore the third, more dominant reason for long.

. . . He respected Nita. At least a little, and that was a rare enough event in itself. A little? Oh, all right, a lot. She kept surprising him . . . She reminded him of H'roonhiit. And when all was said and done, H'roonhiit had been friends with him before she knew she was going to die. He'd known she was warm-hearted and brave in the face of distress, but he hadn't known she was going to kill herself for the Sea. _That_ decision had been very much in the moment, and all her lines had been improvisation.

He remembered her teasing him. _You're too warm-hearted for a shark. Sure you don't have a warm-blood in your ancestry somewhere? Some Master-Shark you are, when you're friends with a whale—friends with your own food. _Such a dark prediction, and neither of them had known it would come true.

She, too, had been afraid of him when they'd first met. She, too, had overcome her fear.

And then she had died.

He'd managed to keep himself from biting into her flesh long enough to hear her last words to him: _Not you, Ed. Let some other shark do it. You were never happy enough to be immortal. _

But he'd tasted her blood in the end.

_Not you, Ed_—she had feared and even hated him at the last. He had seen it in her eyes.

He swam past a stand of razor coral, looking for more fish in distress. He wondered, vaguely, what it would be like to dive into those sharp edges, to feel his own flesh being torn, smell his own blood in the water, feel his own life seep away . . .

He swam on. Self sacrifice was for warm-bloods. H'roonhiit and Nita and the rest could be killed by their own wills; his will to live was too strong. He cast out the memories and searched for more fear in the waters to end.


	3. The Unacknowledged Feeling

Funny how real life seems to get in the way right after you promise not to make long delays! As it is, sorry once again. One chapter left, and hopefully there won't be nearly as long a delay.

Please note, as always, that anything you recognize isn't mine; it's all Diane Duane's.

* * *

He came late to the rehearsal the next day. S'reee had already sung the Invocation and Aroooon was singing the first of the Blue's long passages when he swam toward the circle.

"HNii't was asking where you were earlier," S'reee murmured at his greeting. "She's over there." The humpback gestured with one fin toward Nita before turning her focus back to Aroooon's singing.

"Nita," he greeted as his shadow fell over her.

"Ed." She was calm.

"Come swim with me." He turned without waiting for her answer, wondering if perhaps she would refuse. After all, her shock from yesterday had to be over by now.

She followed.

"So, Silent Lord. You were busy last night," he said once they were away from where others might hear their conversation. He thought he saw Kit watching them anxiously, but the other young wizard apparently decided to just let it go.

"Yes."

He waited for her to say something else, but apparently she wasn't going to. So he reached out to find what was lurking beneath that outward calm. The realization was not a good thing, and his stomach roiled within him. "You are angry . . . "

"Damn right I am!"

_Be careful_, he wanted to warn her. He couldn't very well eat her just yet. "Explain this anger to me," he said, hoping that would get her thoughts in a more composed direction. He paused—she might as well know just how unusual her case was. "Normally the Silent Lord does not find the outcome of the song so frightful. In fact, whales sometimes compete for the privelege of singing your part. The Silent Lord dies indeed, but the death is not so terrible—it merely comes sooner than it might have otherwise, by predator or old age. And it buys the renewal of life, and holds off the Great Death, for the whole Sea—for years."

She stayed silent, still angry, but thinking. She probably knew her sacrifice would be worth it in the long run. But that didn't solve the fear of death. Well, nothing would, he knew. H'roonhiit had been afraid of death right to the very end.

"And even if the Silent One should suffer somewhat," he continued, "what of it? For there is still Timeheart, is there not? . . . The Heart of the Sea. It is no ending, this Song, but a passage into something else. How they extol that passage, and what lies at its end." It was poor comfort, he knew, made even poorer by the fact that he just didn't believe in Timeheart. He never would, either, for as a nonwizard, he would never be able to see it for himself. But he had accepted that unbelief long ago, and belief would help Nita.

He found himself reciting one of the Blue's passages. He knew the Song so well, he didn't need the Sea to whisper it to him, as the wizards said it did for them. "You are a wizard," he told Nita at the end of the passage. "You have known that place, supposedly."

"Yes," she said, soft and subdued. "Yes, I was there."

That calm assurace shook his doubt far more than any of S'reee's long arguments. But he put his own feelings aside, as per usual. "So you know it awaits you after the Sacrifice," he pointed out, "after the change." Other Silent Lords had taken this position firmly, using it to hold off their fear (although, he observed sardonically, it never quite dissipated the fear). Others faced the Sacrifice calmly and bravely, if a little self-righteously. What, then, was Nita's excuse? "But you don't seem to take the change so calmly."

"How can I? I'm human!"

Well, that had very little to do with it. Did she think so much of the boundaries between species that she assumed no whale had known what she was feeling? But truth be told, no Silent Lord _had_ reacted quite the way she was. Human, indeed. "Yes. But make me understand. Why does that make your attitude so different? Why are you so angry about something that would happen to you sooner or later anyway?"

She had an immediate answer for that one. "Because I'm too young for this. All the things I'll never have a chance to do—grow up, work, live—"

"This is not living?" he asked wryly. Did she really think so much of life? Well, she was young. Perhaps that justified it. But he rather thought it would be better to die when one was still young and in love with life than when old and disaffected by it.

"Of course it is!" she answered. "But there's a lot more to it! And getting murdered by a shark is hardly what I call living!"

His thoughts churned darkly at that. _It's not murder. I would never have murdered H'roonhiit, and I wouldn't murder Nita, either. I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm just ending distress. _With more difficulty this time, he cast the emotions out and answered her calmly. "I assure you, it's nothing as personal as murder. I would have done the same for any wizard singing the Silent Lord. I _have_ don't the same, many times. And doubtless shall again." _Not that I want to_, he thought but didn't say. Why couldn't one Song fix the Sea forever? It would almost have been worth H'roonhiit's death if no one ever had to die again.

_And there has to be a better way of ending pain than death_. The thought came suddenly to him. It was so alien he immediately cast it out. But it only came clawing back into his mind again. Despite what his body was telling him, he didn't _want_ to taste Nita's blood.

"Look," Nita said in a small voice after the silence between them had reigned long enough, "Tell me something. . . . Does it really have to hurt a lot?"

"Sprat, what in this life doesn't?" he asked scornfully. The question had merited the renewed use of his nickname for her. "Even love hurts sometimes," he pointed out. "You may have noticed. . . . " After all, she was a warm-blood. There was no doubt she'd encountered love before. Probably more than he had, even given his age and her youth . . .

"Love—what would you know about that?"

The question struck him like a set of teeth. "And who are you to think I would know nothing about it?" he returned angrily, letting a rare emotion seep through him. "Because I kill without remorse, I must also be ignorant of love, is that it? You're thinking I am so old an order of life that I can know nothing but the blind white rut, the circling, the joining that leaves the joined forever scarred. Oh yes, I know that. In its time . . . it's very good. And yes . . . sometimes we wish the closeness of the joining wouldn't end. But what would my kind do with the warm-blood sort of joining, the long companionships? What would I do with a mate?" He said the word disdainfully, but the truth was, he knew. He could still taste s'Reshkaltet's blood, the same as he could still taste H'roonhiit's and the other creatures whose distress had brought their own end.

"Soon enough one or the other of us would fall into distress," he said calmly, describing it to Nita as it _would_ be, but really as it _had_ been. "And the other would partner would end it." _I ended it._ "There's an end to mating and mate, and to the love that passed between." _She screamed at me in the end. She had the fear, but mostly it was rage and hatred that led to _her_ death. Anything resembling love was gone. I knew when I tasted her blood that she had never really loved me_. "That price," he told Nita, "is too high for me to pay, even once. I swim alone."

He had asked H'roonhiit about love once, when the word had been a foreign one to him. He'd asked if it meant more than the joining all species knew. And her answer still left him thinking, all these ages later. _It's not so much a joining of bodies, Ed, but a joining of _souls

Finally, he was able to cast the feelings out again. The rant had ended on the logical, reasonable note, _I swim alone_. That was true, and truth was nothing to fear, nothing to be angry at. He would accept it an move on. That was the way of life.

"But, Sprat," he said, "the matter of _my _loves—or their lack—is hardly what's bothering you." She was bothered at leaving some love or other behind, wasn't she? He wondered briefly about her relationship with her partner, Kit.

"No, love! I've never had a chance to. And now—now—"

Never? "Then you're well cast for the Silent Lord's part." _She had never loved, though she was looking for it and it didn't seem too far off. How often did she tell me . . . _"How does the line go? 'Not old enough to love as yet,/ but old enough to die, indeed—' That has always been the Silent Lord's business—to sacrifice love for life . . . instead of, as in lesser songs, the other way around. . . . " _He_ sacrificed love for life. And there were times, in the darkest corners of his mind, when he wondered whether it was all a big mistake. But his body would keep swimming, kee feeding, keep ending distress.

"Is it truly so much to you, Sprat? Have you truly had no time to love?" he had to know.

She was silent for a moment, considering. "No, Pale One. Not that way. No one . . . that way."

The words were an echo of someone else, so long ago. "Well then," he said calmly, brusquely, "the Song will be sung from the heart, it seems. You will still offer the Sacrifice?" _Will I still have to eat you_?

"I don't want to—"

"Answer the question, Sprat," he said impatiently.

A pause. "I'll do what I said I would."

She was going to die. She was going to end her own life, and for what? A few years' worth of peace in the Sea? A few more lives than would otherwise have been saved, lives she would never see? But she knew the story of Atlantis. She knew it was necessary.

She was too much like H'roonhiit. And he realized he didn't want to go through it again.

But he had to. He was part of the Song, even if he never did much singing. Her blood would call to him, and he wouldn't be able to resist it. Her pain would end . . .

"I am big enough to take a humpback in two bites," he said slowly. "And there is no need for me to be leisurely about it. You will speak to the Heart of the Sea without having to say too much to me on the way." Just as long as he didn't hear her last words, as he had H'roonhiit's, he might be able to do it.

"But I thought you didn't believe—I mean, you'd never—"

"I am no wizard, Nita." Did she really think he was saying it because _he_ believed it? It was _her_ belief that was important now. "The Sea doesn't speak to me as it does to you. I will never experience those high wild joys the Blues sing of—the Sea That Burns, the Voices. The only voices I hear cry out from water that burns with blood. But might I not sometimes wonder what other joys there are—and wish I might feel them too?" _Why couldn't I be a wizard_, he had asked H'roonhiit, so long ago. _Why can't I hear the Sea singing to _me _Is it because of my cold blood that I won't see Timeheart when one of the others ends my distress? _She hadn't answered.

"I wish I could help."

The words were unexpected, as were the implications behind them. "As if the Master could feel distress," he said, denying the pain he'd learned to hide so well. Not even another shark could catch the scent of _his_ pain.

"And as if someone else might want to end it," she said, matching his sarcasm, but there was something gentle about it.

What did that mean? As if someone else might want to end it? It was as if she was saying that while no one could love the Master-Shark's outward self, she had seen inside him. She knew he was haunted by some old distress. But since he denied it, she wouldn't say anything. Was that what it meant to be a warm-blood—that you acknowledged distress in each other and comforted each other in it? Did you let the distress last, but somehow, through that magic of warm-bloods, make it less than it was simply through that odd compassion he could never quite understand? Whereas _he_ would simply end the distress when he found it. No wonder H'roonhiit had hate him at the end. He hadn't fixed her distress, merely ended it.

As if someone else might want to end it . . . Nita almost made it sound as though she thought it would be a kindness.

"I mean," she said into the long silence, "it's dumb to suffer. But if you have to do it, you might as well intend it to do someone some good."

She was going to suffer. She intended to do everyone good. He had suffered long and quietly and never helped anyone. Not even those few he had loved. "It's well said," he managed to tell her finally. "And we will cause it to be well made, the Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved. Such a Song the Sea will never have seen." _Not even with H'roonhiit_, he thought, and there was something close to regret before he denied all feeling again.

S'reee's voice interrupted them. "HNii't? It's almost your time—"

Nita turned to him. "I have to go. Ed—"

"Silent Lord?" She wasn't really the Sprat to him any longer.

"I'm sorry!"

Sorry? For what? one part of his mind wondered. She was the one who was going to die. The other part of his mind knew exactly what she was saying, and in that moment he respected her more than he had H'roonhiit. No, not respected . . . Something else, something stronger, something he never dared to assign to himself.

She was sorry?

"This once, I think, so am I," he said softly. "Go on, Sprat. I will not miss my cue."

She met his eyes for a long moment, then hurried off.


End file.
